Donald Trump hasn’t exactly made an effort to hide his eagerness to pardon Jan. 6 criminals once he returns to the White House. In a recent post-election interview with Time magazine, the president-elect not only said he intends to issue these pardons, he added that he hopes to do so “maybe” within “the first nine minutes” of his second term.
There’s long been some question, however, about the scope of his plan. With this in mind, Trump’s comments during his latest Mar-a-Lago news conference raised plenty of eyebrows. The New York Times reported:
President-elect Donald J. Trump on Tuesday once again left open the possibility of offering pardons to some of his supporters who are serving prison time for assaulting police officers during the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Mr. Trump, who campaigned on a pledge to restore “law and order,” said that the pardons he intended to offer could cover people charged and convicted of violent crimes.
Asked specifically about possible pardons for Jan. 6 criminals convicted of violent offenses, the Republican told reporters, “Well, we’re looking at it.” He added that he’ll be “making major pardons, yes.”
Complicating matters, these were not the only comments the president-elect made on the subject during his meandering Q&A.
- Asked if he’d pardon those who violently clashed with police officers, Trump replied, “Well, you know, the only one that was killed was a beautiful young lady named Ashli Babbitt,” and added that she was “shot for no reason whatsoever.” He was, of course, lying about the circumstances surrounding Babbitt’s death, and badly misstating the casualties from the Jan. 6 assault.
- Trump insisted that the rioters were unarmed, telling reporters, “This would be the only insurrection in history where people went in as insurrectionists with not one gun. … There wasn’t one gun that they found.” This was brazenly false.
- For the first time ever, Trump suggested that the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants might’ve been involved in the Jan. 6 attack, which was utterly bonkers, even for him.
- And Trump insisted that the FBI was directly involved in orchestrating the assault on the Capitol, adding, “Nobody reported it.” In reality, of course, nobody reported on the conspiracy theory because the conspiracy theory has been thoroughly and completely discredited — including by the Justice Department’s inspector general.
To be sure, it might be tempting to disregard the president-elect’s latest nonsense about the violent acts of those acting in his name. After all, it’s not as if Trump hasn’t lied about Jan. 6 before.
But with Inauguration Day just 12 days away, the Republican’s rhetoric continues to take on greater salience because, by his own admission, Trump is prepared to put a great many criminals back onto the street — not because they’re innocent, but because he sees them as political allies.
